Preservation of information

Quick reaction to a GigaOm post from today on disappearance of information (on the web, but it's really a broader trend).

The underlying assumption behind the "alarm" over disappearance is that all information is/should be persistent (and by implication has constant value over time.).  It doesn't - the world is built on decay (entropy...). There are multiple information-decaying forces at work. For example, most information exponentially diminishes in value over time (as do most people - they tend to eventually die). There are of course similar, opposite forces driving the preservation impulses: information (being remembered and sending messages over time) is the only practical way people have found to achieve a tiny bit of immortality. Just two of many interesting properties of information that we tend to overlook.

Update: a beautiful example of life using transient information messages to preserve itself (HT @adrianho).

Note: this is a post in series on information.